Social software

2018-01-29

Writing social software is hard. And, as I said, the act of writing social software is more like the work of an economist or a political scientist. And the act of hosting social software, the relationship of someone who hosts it is more like a relationship of landlords to tenants than owners to boxes in a warehouse.

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The patterns here, I am suggesting, both the things to accept and the things to design for, are givens. Assume these as a kind of social platform, and then you can start going out and building on top of that the interesting stuff that I think is going to be the real result of this period of experimentation with social software.

Everything is here, since 2003. To sum up even if I encourage you to read the whole piece:

How is a group its own worst enemy? Sex talk, identification and vilification of external enemies and religious veneration.

Three things to accept: you cannot completely separate technical and social issues, members are different than users and the core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations.

Four things to design for: The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in. Second, you have to design a way for there to be members in good standing. Three, you need barriers to participation. And, finally, you have to find a way to spare the group from scale.

I kind of find these patterns in every group I joined. It should be taken into account within a local constitution. Somehow reminds me patterns I tried to identify myself. Oh my god, re-reading that piece five years later I realize I already linked to that same page from there…